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Viral fear: Drawing a line from War of the Worlds to Donald Trump

In Broadcast Hysteria, author A. Brad Schwartz dissects the infamous Orson Welles radio show and the dangers of blurring the line between news and entertainment.

Orson Welles broadcasts his radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' science fiction novel The War of the Worlds in New York on Oct. 30, 1938. A new book says the panic the show caused among listeners has been greatly exaggerated. (The Associated Press file photo)

In 1938, the Germans had just invaded Czechoslovakia, the Depression was still raging and there were other daily terrors. It was in this atmosphere of insecurity that Orson Welles and his company of actors, radio technicians and producers — the Mercury Theatre clan — created a radio program based on H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel The War of the Worlds that scared the living daylights out of many who heard it. It became a famous event in broadcast history. A. Brad Schwartz explores the phenomenon in Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News. Schwartz spoke from his home in Ann Arbor, Mich. Our conversation has been edited for length.

Jennifer: It was a difficult time in America when Welles broadcast The War of the Worlds. The Second World War was about to begin in Europe; the Depression was still in effect. With massive unemployment in America, the scare caused by the kidnapping of the Charles Lindbergh baby, the closure of banks, the terrible hurricane that slammed New England, people were understandably tense.

Brad: I’m not sure if Welles consciously meant to create terror, but he had his antenna up and was drawing from what was in the culture at the time. There was a pervasive climate of fear and he was drawn to that. The show had a particular impact because of the condition of the country at the time. The war, the hurricane, the Lindbergh kidnapping had all come over the radio. The radio was bringing a scary world into the living rooms of America.

Jennifer: The real competition over the airwaves for Welles’s Mercury Theatre productions was a program on another station featuring Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy. Did Welles believe his broadcast about Martians landing in New Jersey would steal listeners from Bergen?

Brad: I am skeptical about him being influenced by Bergen’s popularity. The story of people twirling the dial when they were listening to the Edgar Bergen show and catching War of the Worlds at the time doesn’t seem to be a great explanation to me. Most people who tuned into War of the Worlds came to it by a different way.

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The dummy Charlie McCarthy was something people looked down on. You can compare it to shows today: people who watch American Idol aren’t necessarily the people who watch Masterpiece Theatre.

Because Welles had fewer listeners, it gave him the freedom to do whatever he wanted. So he had this idea of doing a fake news broadcast and doing it as well as possible. I don’t think he had expectations of giving his show a jump in the ratings.

Welles loved radio because it put listeners into the mood immediately. You didn’t have to build sets; you can just say now we are in Grover’s Mill, N.J., because it is the theatre of the mind that allows you to make it happen. Welles had a talented group of people who supported him: the musical director Bernard Hermann, who later scored Psycho for Alfred Hitchcock; Joseph Cotton; Agnes Moorehead.

A. Brad Schwartz, author of Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News, says the infamous radio show shouldn't be viewed as a museum piece, but as an event that offers lessons for the age of social media.

Jennifer: While the War of the Worlds broadcast is the most famous radio show of its type, other radio stations had done similar things before. I’m thinking about WGN in Chicago and its fake news show.

Brad: Welles wasn’t the first with his War of the Worlds, but he was the first who took techniques and ideas and put them in one program. What struck me was how much the normal news coverage of the time was dramatized or gussied up to make it more entertaining. We think of that period as the golden age of journalism. But news readers were like actors with personality and events were staged. Welles was indirectly incorporating those techniques in War of the Worlds, showing the dangers of the news format when you blur the line between news and entertainment.

So much of (Donald) Trump’s rise can be explained by this need to view news as entertainment. A news organization such as CNN is a business; they are selling their product to advertisers. Trump, whatever you say about him, is entertaining.

Jennifer: Scholars who studied Welles’ War of the Worlds determined it had far less of an impact than we were led to believe. Very few people, in fact, believed Martians had landed. But it did change the way people studied and thought about radio.

Brad: The panic was greatly exaggerated. Many were frightened by the show for a minute, yes; it may have happened before common sense kicked in. But stories about people grabbing shotguns and pulling kids into the car and racing away were very rare. Most people who were frightened, which was a small fraction of the audience, sat listening until the station break.

This story about War of the Worlds becomes a warning for the social media age. When we are in an environment where people are frightened, fear becomes contagious. It is the whole viral idea. Fast-forward 80 years to the age of Twitter, where it is about sharing information or misinformation.

Jennifer: How did you, a young man who grew up with social media, come to write about a radio show presented in 1938?

Brad: I grew up listening to radio shows. My parents would play them to get me to sleep. I knew about War of the Worlds and I knew about The Shadow. When I was at the University of Michigan, I discovered all these letters that had been written to Orson Welles about War of the Worlds. No one had read them in a decade.

I assumed the letters would talk about people being panicked, but as I started reading them and noticing how positive the reaction was, I began to understand that people were listening to the radio all the time. They read fewer books, and to me all these things seemed so fresh and current in the age of the Internet. We always thought of War of the Worlds as a museum piece; we didn’t realize what a viral medium it was.

The story of the panic was a reminder not to take anything you hear at face value. It was a lesson that you need to be critical about what you hear. A lesson that holds true today.

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